Illusions, Dreams & Happiness
by Winged Rebellions
Summary: Did you know? Happiness is waiting around the corner. It just needs some help from a burning tree, an innocent bird and an old tennisball. Natsume x Mikan.
1. Prelude

**Illusions, dreams & happiness**

_'Don't forget that when the sadness is too strong, there'll be happiness to save you out.'_

* * *

He stared into the flames of the alone standing tree. The tree was standing far away from the forest, so the rest of the trees weren't on fire. It was a lonely tree, standing all alone, with only a peaceful river as its companion. The bright flames of the fire were so strong, he noticed, as they were mirrored in his eyes. It was an accident. He saw how the cat nearly caught that innocent bird, so he decided to warn the bird using a small flame. "Agh." The teachers would probably get pissed again. Though that wasn't really something he could actually care about.

The black cat looked at him with a sharp look, as if it tried to tell him "What the hell did you do that for?" He glared back at the cat and it ran away.

See? Even black cats were afraid of him, just like how all his classmates were, except for that stupid Shouda girl and Ruka. But then again Ruka was in a different class, so he wasn't a classmate.

"Watch out!"

He unconsciously found himself catching a tennis ball. It was an old ball, probably used a lot of times and probably could hardly bounce anymore, as squeezing it was easy.

He threw it back to a girl who was waving with her right arm, signing to him that she wanted the ball. She yelled: "Thanks!" when she caught it and then ran away, as her brown hair tied up in a ponytail went up and down every step she took. He felt the feeling of envy burning deep inside him, recalling the bright smile she had before she turned around to go back to her friend and resume their tennis match, while he was wearing this tired and probably depressed look on his handsome face.

Yes, it was his handsome face. He knew it was handsome and not particularly because he was so arrogant to admit so. He was just told so a so many times that the idea had already become a fact that he memorized for himself, just as how he had to memorize formulas and quotes. It was also this face that made him hated by nearly all the male students and loved by the female ones. At first. After all, afterwards they found out how scary he really was when they saw him 'beating up an innocent student'.

All of a sudden that girl turned back again, with a terrified look on her face and stared at the tree that I had turned into a sea of flames. "What are you doing?" She ran in his direction, still with her focus on the tree. "Do something about it!"

He just looked at her, surprised by her slow reaction, as well as the fact that she actually cared to talk to him, or even commanding him to do something. Didn't she know who he was? Then he recollected his scattered self-consciousness again and said: "Can't be bothered to."

She looked at him with a not understanding look that also tried to pierce through his mind. But knowing himself, he was probably wearing that arrogant look on his face once again, causing her to still run away eventually. He sighed.

Obviously he'd gotten his hopes up again, thinking someone would actually not get scared of him for once. A simple girl like her, as normal as she was, probably wouldn't want to bother knowing him or 'helping' him out with stopping the fire. Since after all, he was-

Suddenly he heard the sound of water around him, as drops are glittering in the strong light of the sun, like little, precious diamonds would do. He felt the cold water creeping on his back, from up to down. His clothes felt heavy and his head cooled down. He was wrong. She'd run away to get a bucket and filled it with water, in order to stop the fire.

"What the hell are you doing? Do you want to get burnt that badly? Help me!"

He turned back to face her, as he snapped his finger and he knew the flames had disappeared abruptly. After all, he had the Fire Alice. He could control the flames. He could make a flame and put it out anytime he wanted to. He looked into her eyes, while her face had the surprised look all written on it.

Yes, he was Hyuuga Natsume, a so-called delinquent of the school. Beat up a total of eight students. Five of them had gotten a broken leg from the beating up, the other just got away with a broken toe and some others were punched until their cheeks got swollen, but it didn't change the fact that all of them had to go to the hospital department of the academy after their meeting with him.

'Oh. Here we go,' he thought. 'Bet she'll run away for real now. Especially that she knows that I have the Fire Alice and therefore that I'm Hyuuga Natsume.'

Because fear was like the paint he would paint with. He was able to create masterpieces of horror because of the great amount of fear he'd collected for the past ten years. And no one would like his paintings, because they couldn't understand why he'd use a horrible tool such as fear to paint with. The thing was, however, that like the rest, Natsume couldn't understand why he used fear either.

He had tried hard to not be so fearsome. He tried to be gentle to everyone around him and to be polite and patient. He tried not to say anything bad and to answer as friendly as he could when someone would ask him a question he didn't want to be asked.

But after all, the problem was lying in the smiling part. Because without that smile, anyone would think that he was a fearsome guy, especially after having so many bad rumours put on his name, with that cold look on his face every time.

So he didn't expect this girl to react any more different from anyone else than those.

"Are you Hyuuga Natsume…?"

The bell rang. He looked up and saw the movements of students going back to their classroom through the windows. The cherry blossom petals from the trees deep inside the forest were falling, slowly, tracing the path of the wind, until they'd one by one reach the ground, far from where they originally had been. He picked up one as he stretched himself out.

"Yeah."

He observed her actions. He saw how she was playing around with her fingers, probably trying to figure out what to do: Just run away or say something awkward and wait until he'd walk away by himself? As he'd thought, she was indeed not different from all the other people who had been in the same position as she was before.

She smiled. He widened his eyes.

"It's nice meeting you for once! I'm a classmate of Ruka-pyon's. He's always talking about you, so I was wondering how you were in reality."

He was silent. The sounds of the wind going through the trees and picking up some leaves along on an infinite road entered his ears, but created a kind of music in his brain. He was starting to hear things, that was for sure. He closed his eyes for a bit and decided that once he'd open his eyes again, he'd discover this girl didn't exist, that he wasn't wet and the tree was still burning as it was.

One, two, three.

He opened his eyes again and looked once again into the curious eyes of the brown-haired girl. "You all right?"

Water drops traced down the path of his wet hair and fell somewhere in the grass. His right eyebrow started to twitch, just like how he couldn't manage to keep his knees still. It felt like they would give up on him any minute and he'd fall flat with his face on the grass.

He ran away.

He dashed into the school building, to his classroom. The second he opened the door of it, curious faces from all sides, including the teacher's, were turned to look at him. A few girls started laughing, but directly stopped when they realized it was Hyuuga Natsume who was soaking wet. And Hyuuga Natsume wasn't just a guy you could laugh at without getting beaten up afterwards.

"Natsume-kun, I think it's better if you go to the infirmary and ask for a towel." Suddenly Narumi said. So it was homeroom, huh? It was surprisingly quiet in the classroom for homeroom though. But then again he couldn't judge, as he never really joined homeroom even once ever since this school year had started. "You're soaking wet, from top to toe."

He nodded unconsciously, still with his mind full of panic and thoughts about the nameless girl who had been so nice to him. It was odd. He walked to the infirmary without knowing what exactly was doing, except for asking himself what the heck had just happened.

He got a towel from the nurse, who'd looked at him with the same surprised look as everyone in the corridors had done. She said that she was going out for a bit to get something to drink, because it was so warm. He didn't really hear it and couldn't tell afterwards if he nodded or didn't do anything at all. He just sat down on a chair, with the towel on his head. He unbuttoned his shirt, still thinking about it over and over. The incident with that girl.

"Natsume?" A familiar voice sounded from the other side of the infirmary. "What happened to you? You're soaking wet." The other person laughed. Natsume looked into the face of his best friend, who he knew for a long time. His bright blue eyes were glittering a little bit, like the water drops had as well. He had to answer Natsume's question.

"Ruka," he whispered. He saw how his friend looked startled, but continued: "This girl in your class. She's a tangerine with deep, hazel eyes. Kinda short." He saw how Ruka's startled expression changed to a questioning look, not understanding what he was trying to ask. Natsume hastily added: "She plays tennis."

"Oh!" Ruka softly hit the palm of his own hand with his right hand, which he would always do when he'd remember something all of a sudden or know an answer for a question. "I guess you mean Sakura Mikan?"

Sakura Mikan.

The name sounded like a song, not because Ruka could sing so well. It was just like the illusion that the trees before had cast on him before. Something that wasn't true in reality. But it was true in his mind. And that feeling was not something he hated.

And he really had to admit, the second he heard her name, it felt like a huge burden was finally lifted from his shoulder. A burden that he had been carrying around for ten years already, starting from the car accident that lonely, cold Christmas Eve. The pictures of the bright, scarlet liquid on the white snow at that moment would often pop up at the idea of that terrifying evening. Maybe this was the first time that he could actually smile while thinking of the cold breezes that had made him shiver that sad day.

* * *

_'Even if happiness is hidden around a corner, with cupid's burning tree, innocent bird and old tennisball helping it out, everything will be all right.'_


	2. Crevasse

**Illusions, dreams & happiness**

**

* * *

**

It was a bright day of spring. The sun was shining like it would always do on a normal day during spring, the birds chirping the same annoying way as they always would and the water streaming slowly, yet not soundlessly in the river in a certain academy in Tokyo. It was a river where many of the students of that academy would be sitting around, because the water could cool them down if they needed to be cooled down, or because it was a peaceful place to study or just talk with friends.

Which made the river a bit less peaceful than Natsume had really known it to be.

Maybe it was because he had been staying in that academy for nearly ten years already and because he already knew all the good spots on the campus, which he hadn't left for even once ever since the first time he took a step on it, that he couldn't find his peace back again whenever he would be sitting in his tree, near the river.

He knew all the good spots of the academy. The trees of the Eastern Forest, for example, were easy to fall asleep in because of the shadows, yet you couldn't catch a cold after doing so. And there was the unused classroom next to the principal's office that, despite its risky neighbouring room, was one of the best spots to do things that weren't supposed to be done elsewhere in the school, like smoking. Even if he didn't smoke or anything like that. It just that no one would go there, usually, that he thought it was nice.

But the point was, he knew all the great spots in the whole academy. He didn't have anything to do anymore, except for skipping classes, eat, sleep, eat more and sleep again. And that was why he loved his comfortable spot near the river. It was marked as his spot, high up in the only cherry blossom tree that was near the river. No one wanted to climb that tree, because it was his already. And everyone, except for Shouda and Ruka, was afraid of him.

"Natsume, it's time for class. It's bad if you skip again."

Although until fairly recently, 'everyone' had suddenly become 'nearly everyone'. After all, Sakura Mikan enjoyed being an exception, even though she probably didn't do it on purpose. It could piss him off sometimes, but most of the time, he would find himself admitting to the fact that she was very amusing.

"Homeroom's next." He answered. "Aren't _you_ going to class instead of telling me off?"

"Can't be bothered to. Self-studying." She held up her right arm, which she would always do whenever she felt like joining him in the tree. Natsume glared at her stretched hand, showing he didn't feel like pulling her up. She was darn heavy for a girl her length. She started using her puppy eyes. "Ah, please?"

Sakura Mikan was one of the big surprises of his life, he realized the second he pulled her up in the tree. She didn't apologize to the rumoured 'most dangerous' student of the academy when she'd splashed Natsume with a bucket of water, though he wasn't planning on making her do so. And she was also willing to sit on the same tree branch like he did, while both of them were ditching school.

"I thought Miss Tennis would always practise by herself whenever she didn't feel like joining class?"

She looked at him with big surprised eyes. The upper half of her face was darkened a bit because of the shadow of the tree, but he could still recognize the surprised, hazel-coloured eyes.

"How did you know?"

"I always see you practising there." He pointed at the wall of the changing rooms of the tennis club. Then he started mimicking the movements he had been observing lately. He tried doing the backhand and asked: "Like this, no?"

She chuckled. "Your form is really bad."

"I'm just doing it the way you do it though."

It had already been a week since their first encounter with each other. The burning tree, the water splashing and his un-cool attitude were the not-so lovely ingredients for their meeting. She had started talking to him, naturally, and he had run away, shocked by the fact she did so. The next day, however, when their eyes met each other in front of the entrance to the main school building, she had taken a few steps in his direction and greeted him. And he greeted her back, maybe not with a bright smile like she did, but at least he did greet her. That was the big thing.

Hence, she was a _bit_ different from the other students.

Together they would sit on that certain branch of the cherry blossom tree near the calm river on the campus of Gakuen Alice, talking about how Sakura Mikan loved playing tennis and about school. Never would she mention anything about his rumours or get angry if he wouldn't answer one of her questions. While he usually disliked talking to people too much, he couldn't help but to think that he didn't hate this habit of having a round of chitchat while skipping class.

After all, he had something amusing in his life now.

"Aren't you in a club?"

"Stupid. Can't be bothered to join one."

"But it's fun!"

"Takes too much time and effort. Would rather sleep."

"I have the feeling you'd do well though."

He looked at her, curious why she wanted him to join a club badly. He hadn't noticed that for the past seven days, they'd gotten to know each other so well already that she could already read his thoughts just by seeing his expressions. She continued talking, not waiting for his response.

"I always see Natsume walking alone, if Ruka's not around." She suddenly looked a bit sad. It was a bit of a lonely feeling that he could sense. He couldn't understand what she was trying to do, wearing that kind of expression around. He'd truly never seen her doing that.

She looked at Mr. Bear, who was fooling around with Piyo-Piyo at the other side of the river. "So I thought that you might feel lonely."

He closed his eyes and sighed. He should've seen this coming. After all, he had already found out the labels for all the people who would try to talk to him. Three stupid and troublesome labels that could do nothing but make him look more pathetic than he already did. Label A was for the people who thought he was cool and later on would find out about the rumours and run away, so basically just ignorant people who got hospitalised for too long or new-found Alices. Then there was label B, who looked down on him and didn't exactly 'talk' to him, but sneered different kind of insults.

But even worse than both was label C.

"I don't really feel like talking about this," he muttered.

He hadn't found out about label C until two years ago, when a girl had been trying to get his attention so desperately that he just couldn't ignore her anymore when she started blocking the door leading to the dorms. In the end, her only reason for doing so was because she thought she could change him.

Which basically meant that she pitied him.

And Sakura Mikan right now was no different from that.

"But I'm serious," the tangerine said from beside him. "I think that if everyone knew how you really are, they'd think you're just as cool like how I think right now."

"It's not like I need them to think so."

"I think you're lying though, Natsume." She looked at him with a pair of serious eyes. It made him surprised. She hadn't used that expression before either. What was it that she started bringing this up so suddenly and kept on insisting? "You see, whenever we talk, it's always about me or school."

"So?" He asked, dodging her focus on him. He looked at how his class was in chaos once again, now that Narumi had left it in the assistant's care. What was that guy's name again? "I don't see the problem."

"The problem is that you never mention anything about yourself."

At that moment, the wind suddenly got stronger. The branch they were sitting on started to shake a bit, causing her to lose her balance. She let out a soft yell, but stopped immediately when she noticed his hand holding her near her right elbow. Her eyes were surprised and looked at the petals that fell on the ground in silence when he let go of her.

It was silent, and he let it be, as awkward as it was. He couldn't do anything about it anyway. What was he to do? Should he start telling all kinds of uninteresting facts about himself like his favourite colour or about idols that he didn't even have? It wasn't like he felt that it would make her any happier if he did so.

"There's nothing interesting about me."

"Do you have any siblings?"

"One sister. She's younger by two years."

"That's cute." She smiled. "What's her name?"

"Aoi."

"That's a cute name. I wonder if she looks like you."

"Meh. She has about the same kind of eyes."

"Just as crimson?" She started looking into his eyes a long, long time, while wearing the same smiling face like she would usually do. It was as if she didn't know about the long awkward silence that had been there just a moment ago, while he was positive that she was aware of it. She wasn't that stupid.

"Brighter."

Talking about him was awkward, he noticed. Even if she was acting she thought everything was nice about him, he did notice the fact she said something nice every time he'd mention a fact about his sister. Those nice words made him feel uneasy, as if they were sweet lies made up just to satisfy him. Quickly, he asked: "Don't you have any siblings?"

"Nope." She smiled. "My Dad died before I was even born. It's impossible for me to get any siblings, unless my Mum decides to remarry someone else… But I guess even so I wouldn't be able to meet them, my siblings."

He looked at her bitter, yet a bit sweet expression on her face. Her eyes said that she was sad, but her smile was telling a different story. He couldn't figure out what she was thinking. Was she sad, or was she happy? When did he become so slow that even solving such an easy question had become so hard?

"What do you mean?"

"Oh… I don't really know my mother." She gave the answer to his question when her smile faded away; she was sad, not happy. Even smiles from Sakura Mikan could be lies.

She pointed at the river. "It's so clear. I can even see the fish from here."

He could do nothing but nod.

"Hey Natsume…" Said she, suddenly. It surprised him. He'd thought that she would probably remain silent for the rest of the time. "I've been wondering for some while, but why are you always alone?"

He looked at her from the corner of his eyes, while his face was facing straight forward. He couldn't read what she was planning to do; neither did he know what exactly she was thinking at that moment. Why was it that he lost his wonderful sixth sense against this little girl that he barely knew for a short week?

"Oh," she quickly said, when she probably still noticed his gaze, no, glare at her, even though he tried to hide it, "if you don't want to say anything, I understand. You don't have to."

Natsume once again glanced at her nervous and uneasy face, closed his eyes and shook his head. He was hesitating, while it was un-like him to hesitate. His thoughts were solid and he should know what he wanted. Why couldn't he now? Not a big deal. Just do it, he decided. She went through the trouble of asking him; it'd be stupid if he wouldn't answer.

"It's because I'm scary."

Mikan finally took her glance off her shoes and looked at him with a surprised look. "What?"

He grinned, but couldn't help but to notice the grin probably looked sourer than amused. It made him feel awkward. "Didn't you hear about the rumours?"

She shook her head. He sighed.

He told her about the rumour that had started circulating around the corridors of the academy three years ago. It was the first rumour concerning Natsume himself. Or at least, it was the first rumour concerning him beating up someone.

Of course that wasn't true and he didn't beat up anyone. The so-rumoured Takaki-kun would have been beaten up by Natsume because of a ridiculous sandwich that was the last one to be sold in the canteen. It didn't really happen, him beating up the guy - that he didn't even know - just because of that stupid sandwich, so because the story was just too unbelievable, so no one really took it seriously.

Until one month after that, when Natsume was indeed caught punching an upperclassman. He couldn't say it hadn't really happened, because it was true. He did punch him. Twice. The friends of the guy he was beating up saw it happening and told the whole school. The reason? They didn't know. It didn't matter either, since the truth was the truth after all; Hyuuga Natsume beat up a student. He was a bad guy. The Academy locked him up in his room, without asking for the reason. When he could go to school again, no one dared to come near him within two meters.

It was frustrating, thinking about the fact that people even started believing that the sandwich rumour was true.

He looked to his left, to the tangerine who had been listening to his story in silence. She didn't show any signs of impatience and neither did she try asking things in between. She was satisfied with just listening to it, it seemed. He liked it that way.

But he wouldn't when she'd look worried, like she was right now.

"But you know, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. Ruka was supporting me, anyway. And Shouda still wanted to come near me, or even touch me," said he, with once again a sour smile.

"I wonder when Natsume will finally show me a real smile of his."

He chuckled and glanced at her with a playful smile. "Like this?"

"No." She said, with a serious look on her face, as if she was about to teach him one of the great lessons of life. Not that she could possibly know anything about that, but it would've been amusing if she really would. "I mean a _real _smile. A smile of happiness."

He rolled his eyes and turned back again, looking straightforward to the school building. This conversation was starting to get another annoying turn again. Why couldn't she stop lecturing about her great beliefs in happiness? Sure he did know what happiness was. He just didn't want to get used to it. After all, getting his hopes up would eventually only lead to another good wave of depression, when he'll be let down. Again.

"Moreover, wouldn't you want to know the reason why I beat him up?" He said, intentionally with a dark expression on his face, trying to scare her off.

"If Natsume felt like telling, he would've probably already done so. But since you didn't, I won't force anything out of you." She shrugged and wore that innocent look on her face. "But let's make a promise."

He looked at the pinky of her left hand that she was pointing with at him. A pinky promise? What?

"What kind of promise?" He asked, with a tone of confusion in it.

"That when I'll finally manage to make you smile properly, you'll tell me what happened exactly." She grinned. "Because I know that what you just told me is not even half of the whole story. Am I wrong?"

He shook his hand and held out his pinky as well. How long hasn't he done a pinky promise? Surely he hasn't even once thought about it ever since he got separated from Aoi. How lonely that felt. He took a deep breath the second he saw Mikan close her eyes in happiness, as their two pinkies touched each other, and they made this childish promise.

He didn't hate it.

"Shoot! P.E. is next! Have to run!" She jumped off the branch, nearly broke a bone, but still ran away, gracefully, as she turned back to bid him adieu by waving. The usual smile still didn't fade away.

He already broke his promise the second they made it, he realized, glancing at how her back slowly started to fade away into the main building of the Academy. The happiness that she had made him feel, the second she thought of the plan, made him notice the nostalgia and his yearning for the past, when everything was comfortable and warm. It was as warm as how he'd feel when he was with her.

At that moment, he wanted to show his 'real' smile.

But he wouldn't tell her. He wanted to enjoy this little moment of happiness just a little, even if it was just that tiny, little bit. Then, he would be satisfied.

He sighed and lied back to the trunk of the cherry blossom tree. He looked up to the deep blue sky, where the birds were flying around in their own, familiar groups. This bright day of spring surely was a very good day. Then, he closed his eyes and fell asleep. The dream he had must've been a nice one, as well.


	3. Iridescence

**Illusions, dreams & happiness**

* * *

The sun was shining brightly once again, like it had the day before and the day before that day. It was starting to become normal again, waking up in the bright sunlight that would welcome him every morning. It was pleasant and definitely better than waking up in the lonely darkness during winter.

Lately, however, Natsume would always wake up with a headache. Despite the fact he would always make sure to go to bed on time and the fact he always took naps during the day, he would still wake up with his mind in chaos. The worst was, the first feeling he would get once he'd become conscious said: 'Natsume, you forgot something important.'

He didn't know what it was that he forgot. It wasn't like him to forget anything that could be actually important in his life. So he would think about it for a long, long time.

It wasn't only in the morning. His mind would be a great source of chaos the whole day and even in the evening as well, just before falling asleep. And the next day would be the same again. He couldn't figure out what it was that bothered him so much, especially not after meeting Sakura Mikan.

After all, she was the second light to welcome him every morning now, just after the sunlight.

Every morning, five minutes after he'd take the first step out of his room, Sakura Mikan would run around in the corridors. Once they'd bump into each other, she would drag him to the canteen and they'd have breakfast together. Which also caused for rumours spreading around.

The gloomy Hyuuga Natsume _talked_ to the academy's sunshine Sakura Mikan. How awkward that was. He wouldn't even talk to the boys in his own class, so why bother talk to a girl who drags so much attention with her? The problem was, he himself couldn't quite figure it out either. But he didn't mind leaving the question unanswered that way. It was very enjoyable, passing his days without knowledge what would come the next day.

"Natsume, you look out of it," her voice sounded from next to him. There they were, walking in the corridors, heading to the canteen.

"I've been waking up with nasty headaches lately." He said, frowning.

"Take an aspirin."

"Tried already. Doesn't work."

"That sounds pretty bad," it sounded from behind them.

"Ruka." He turned around to face his best friend, who smiled.

"Anyway, gotta run! I've got class duty!" Ruka ran past his two friends, as he still waved back without looking. Natsume frowned even more upon seeing the back of his best friend disappear around a corner.

"Something wrong?" Mikan asked from next to him, looking at him with a slightly worried expression.

"I feel like he's been avoiding me lately."

"Hm…"

As they walked side by side, Natsume realized she probably would know what had been happening with his best friend, especially since she was in one class with Ruka. Mikan didn't say a thing, but as he couldn't read what she was thinking from her expressions, he understood it was something she'd rather hide.

That was how he would give in to her. She would always win, even without having to exchange words with him. That was how it would go when she had secrets she didn't want to tell him. Yet he was always the one who would end up telling his secret, letting all of them get revealed one by one, until the last one would be told as well. And to think secrets were supposed to remain untold. It was unfair, but he could live with it. Since it was Sakura Mikan.

"Want some of this sweet bread? It's got fruit flavours in it." She asked him, as she faced him from across the table in the canteen. Breakfast.

He shook his head and said: "No. I don't like sweet things."

"Pft. And you don't like sour and spicy things either. You're no good, Natsume."

He looked at her, puzzled by the fact she knew he didn't like to eat sour and spicy things either. She, who was playing with her sweet bread and then took a sip of her milk, didn't answer his look. How did she know? Was it that obvious? Did he even mention not liking those two flavours?

"You always throw away the cucumber vinegar salad. And the rice pot with spicy vegetables too."

"Why do you go as far as observing what I eat?"

"Because I'm interested in Natsume." She said, still not looking at him directly, but eating her bread bite by bite, as if the bread was more important than him. But the words were the things that mattered to him, not the actions.

He noticed the nervous glances from around them. Looks shot at Mikan for her strange words. '_Because I'm interested in Natsume._' Those were words that were supposed to be unsaid, yet they were not a secret. The only thing that could have defined that kind of tense aura would've only been 'taboo'.

And still she continued as if it were insignificant – that what she said. She couldn't care about the rumours, or about what people would think about what she thought was important or what she would pay attention to. She wanted to do what she wanted.

He thought that kind of freedom was really great, so he smiled a bit, exactly on the moment that she decided to take a look at him. And there they were, grinning like idiots, while everyone else was pointing at them, accusing her of breaking the rule of trespassing to an area she wasn't supposed to be standing on, because that was Natsume's territory. The enemy's territory. An unspoken rule that was nowhere written out.

But she was still willing to break that rule and talk to him as if everything around them did not exist or matter. That was what he saw as a kind of freedom. It was a kind of freedom that allowed her to spread her wings and fly away from the group of birds she was with from the beginning, so to accompany him, who was chained to the ground and couldn't fly along with her.

That moment, he realized he was dragging her down and the grin faded away from his face.

_He was dragging her down._

_

* * *

_

There they were again, sitting on the familiar tree branch that they would visit daily now. A kind of ritual, it had become. Another rule that was not written down or spoken of. But this time, it was a good thing, not a bad one. He loved it.

"Natsume, I'm going to look into your agenda."

He hummed a melody he made up just that moment, ignoring what she said.

"I'm seriously going to look into it."

"Do whatever you want."

She grabbed his schoolbag and opened it with haste, as if she had been yearning to look into his agenda for ages. She reminded him of a homeless craving for food. That thought made him want to throw up a bit, for some strange reason.

"Ah. It's your sister's birthday next month." She said, after she stopped browsing through the pages of his torn agenda. It was a miracle she could still read his sister's birthday reminder.

"May the 12th, huh?" He murmured.

"Yeah." She replied.

She continued looking through the pages again, until she suddenly stopped. This time, it wasn't the birthday register that she stopped at. It was the full page with the data he should've written down for May the 12th, yet it was empty.

She was silent.

"Natsume, could you tell me the reason why you beat up that guy?"

He glanced to his left, where she sat, innocently looking into the blank pages of his agenda, except for that one spot where the birthday date of his sister was written. She looked a bit lonely.

"That's an odd change of topic," he said, trying to add a gentle feeling into it. That was an attempt from him to cheer her up, whatever may have made her look that way. He just didn't like that look, even if it was rare. He couldn't take it.

"Yeah…" She murmured. "I just thought… you've been smiling a lot lately, so maybe it would be fine for me to ask…"

He raised his right eyebrow. "I have?"

"Yes, you have!" She turned her head to face him, as she nearly let go of her agenda in her haste. "You do, every morning when we enter the canteen! It's just that you never noticed. But I did notice! You see, you smile when we're skipping class! You did this morning too, remember? And you also smile when we're talking and when we meet in the corridors and when you go to our classroom to look for Ruka and-"

"Stop!" He nearly screamed, out of panic for her sudden burst out in words. She looked so disturbed, that he couldn't help but to cut her off. "That's enough. I'll tell you, so calm down. Deep breath in, breathe out. Breathe in… yeah, exactly." He patted her over her back as she calmed down, after nearly having burst out in hyperventilation. He wouldn't know how to handle that kind of situation without any help from someone.

She wanted to say something again, but he covered her mouth. He made the 'silence' sign with his fingers and she nodded obediently. It was as if she was a child who had just been told off by her mother after she did something wrong. She didn't do anything wrong in reality, however. She worried for him. That was a good thing. Even if in this case, the person whom she worried for was Natsume and not a different, ordinary person. It was still gentle of her.

"I'll tell you, so be silent."

He pulled himself into the world that had evolved him into it six years ago, when he had experienced the colours of the world for merely eight years. That was when he was playing piano, just like Aoi did. Or more like, she played the piano like he did, since he started first. Yet she was better at playing it than he was. Aoi was a gentle and bright child, unlike the gloomy, quiet Natsume. She was better at understanding and communicating with others. And she was better at expressing her feelings too.

Everyone noticed it when she hit the black and white coloured keys of the piano at their home for the first time in her life: She was a prodigy. She was able to use her social skills with her playing as well. Every time, their teacher would praise Aoi for her brilliant playing and hard work. Yet it was always the same message for him. '_Next time better, Natsume-kun._'

But he didn't get jealous of Aoi. He couldn't and would never ever become jealous of her. It was because he knew how hard she practised and how much time she put into researching the composers' backgrounds and watching other professionals play the piano. It was because she dreamt of becoming one of them as well. She put more effort into it than he could've dreamt of. That was why he couldn't help but to enjoy listening to whatever his sister would play, may it be to a whole audience, or just to him alone, because he knew her story. Always, he would love the warm and gentle sounds. They would never betray him.

She always asked for his opinion on her playing. He'd nearly always have comments on the postures or her technique. He could never find anything to say about her way of expressing the music. She would catch him in a daydream using simple sounds and only let go of him when the last note would have faded away into the emptiness.

He didn't know the last note would fade away so soon though. At least, he didn't expect it to fade away in such a brute way as it did with Aoi, when she got into a car accident.

He heard Mikan gasp a bit.

"She lost her ability to see." He said, as he leaned back to the edge of the branch that took an odd turn towards the sky. "But even if she only lost her vision, she could've still played flawlessly, just like Beethoven when he became deaf. She was a genius like that. She lost more than just that."

He held up his hands to her. "She lost these too."

Mikan kept on staring at his hands, as if she expected them to do something out of ordinary. Of course that wasn't the case. He could tell what he felt. She was more confused and shocked, rather than ecstatic for anything like a trick to happen. She was reacting just like how Ruka had when he told him the story.

"And I got separated from her when they forced me into this academy." He continued. "I never heard her play the piano again, nor did I ever meet her again. The only thing I know is that she's at home, lying in bed, as my parents take care of her."

The bell rang that moment and noise started to make its way from the school buildings. They could hear students standing up and talking to each other, the one louder than the other. They both took their glances off each other to see the movements of the students through the big windows.

"… Why did you beat up that senpai?" She whispered.

"He insulted her." He grunted.

"He insulted Aoi?"

He nodded.

"… How?" She asked, softly again.

"He said his dead grandma could play better."

Natsume knew that was a stupid reason and he knew no one would understand that this 'insult' was worth a beating up. But only he knew how hard Aoi spent on practising, until her fingers would nearly give up on her and she'd call it a day. And the next morning, she would continue doing the same again. Only he would beat someone else up for such a small thing. But he couldn't have let it pass so easily. They didn't understand the hardships she went through. He did.

A dragging silence took over and befell them. She didn't talk, nor move. The only thing she did was still looking at his hands, still with the shock of the story she'd heard. He could only pat her over her head.

"I guess you're scared now after all?"

At that moment, it was as if she managed to get a grip of herself, when her eyes started to regain the twinkles they always had and he liked so much about them. She shook her head. "I think what you did was right."

He smiled.

"Hey, Natsume..."

"Hn?"

"How do you feel right now?"

He thought about it for a minute. Then he realized the chaos that had hunted him for the past days had finally vanished. Chaos? No way. That's what they call 'eager'. Eager to tell your secret to someone dear to you.

"Relieved," he whispered, with a smile. Then he continued a bit louder: "Now it's my turn to ask a question."

"Sure," she said.

"What's the reason for you to suddenly bring up the beating up incident?"

"Oh…" She started thinking. "Ruka just told me that May the 12th was an important day for you and that I should take care of you very well on that day. I thought it might've had a link, because he looked very serious."

"Heh."

He was about to jump off the branch when she suddenly stopped him by pulling him by his left elbow. She looked at him, with a serious expression.

"Don't you ever dare forget I'm here because we're friends."

He glanced over to her, as she looked at him as well. At that moment, he realized she had known what he was thinking during breakfast that morning, and that he had once again lost a discussion that had not been spoken out loud.

He grinned. "Never."

He jumped off the tree branch and offered her his hand. "For you, dear princess."

She looked at his hand, for a moment with suspicion, but then understanding what he meant with it. Next period had started. She took it and jumped off the tree branch as well. "Thank you, dear knight."

Their lips curled up as he let go off her hand and they took off to their classes, grinning like little kids who did not know what 'sadness' and 'loneliness' meant. All they knew was 'freedom'. And that was something to carry along for their whole life.


	4. Staccato

**Illusions, dreams & happiness**

**

* * *

**

"_Natsume?"_

"_Yeah?"_

"_Could you listen to me for a little bit? Tanaka-sensei told me to study this piece, but whenever I try to play it, it sounds a bit dull."_

_He nodded._

_Aoi smiled and took her place on the piano-stool, as she put the scores on the lectern. She lifted up her arms gracefully and then her fingers touched the black and white keys._

_Fantaisie-Impromptu, a piece that was composed by Chopin seventeen decades ago and a piece that was assumed to be hated by its composer. It was a piano piece that wasn't supposed to be played by a girl of ten years old, not only because of the amazing technique it used, but also because of its heavy feelings that a normal child wouldn't be able to take on. It involved darkness and feelings that couldn't be paired along with the innocence of a young girl._

_Yet Aoi was able to play it._

_What she called dull was in his ears amazing and unreachable. A technique of high level and an interpretation that he wouldn't ever be able to understand and could only admire. Those were only for her to use and for him to listen to. That was how life was for the both of them. It granted Aoi great talent and him the ability to listen to her talent. Even though that would sound like something awful to outsiders, he saw it as a great gift. A gift that he couldn't be happier with._

_When she hit the last note and waited for it to fade away, she looked up to him with a curious look, ecstatic for his opinion on her 'dull' playing. All he could do was smile and be envious of his sister's skills that he didn't have. And as a respond, she could only smile back. That was their 'gift' from life.  
_

_

* * *

_

Greetings in the corridors. A boring lecture. A faint smile. Conversations about nothing. A bright shining sun. Whispering from all sides. Laughing about lame jokes.

His life had become a bit staccato. Things were going past him one by one, the other a bit louder than the other. It brought variation in his life, the surprise of not knowing what will happen next, although it wasn't making him worry too much. Life became peaceful and relaxing, yet still challenging and a bit exciting.

The only problem was, there was a change in his life. No, this time he wouldn't repeat the fact that Sakura Mikan had burst into his life like an explosion and changed him. No. This was different. This time, it wasn't Mikan who burst into his life. To be exact, it wasn't even _one_ person who burst into his life.

"Natsume-san, is it fine for me to come up as well?"

"Actually, what if I say it's not fi-"

"Yeah, feel free to."

He looked at the girl who was sitting freely left to him with a blaming look. She, however, ignored him as she kept on wearing her everyday bright and cheerful smile. When he realized she wasn't going to look back at him anyway even if he kept on glaring at her, he started to glance at the two boys who were climbing up the tree and took their place on another branch in front of 'their' branch. One called himself 'Mochu' and the other was Natsume's classmate 'Koko'.

The happening of those two interfering in his life was part of Sakura Mikan's plan: 'I'm going to let Natsume meet some of my friends.' He'd told her often that he didn't feel like it. People had tried it on him before and no one actually succeeded at it, except for her. And now that she succeeded partly, it was annoying.

What was so annoying then?

Mochu.

Mochiage was a guy who seemed to love himself a lot. It was clear to Natsume from the second he saw him. Now arrogance wasn't quite a thing that's appreciated by a lot of people, and that included Natsume as well. The worst part, however, was the fact that Mochu had strangely followed him to practically everywhere ever since they first met. May it be the toilet or his own room, Mochu was there, _always_. It took him a lot of effort to shoo his stalker away, so he got annoyed.

"Mochu, buy me something to drink, would you?" Mikan asked.

Mochu rolled his eyes. "Why would I?"

"Because Natsume is thirsty."

Mochu jumped off the tree and ran immediately to the canteen. Natsume couldn't help but to frown at his neighbour upon seeing this sight, asking himself why she had to say that.

"Natsume, don't frown so much. You'll get wrinkles easier if you keep on frowning."

He glanced at her white shirt and skirt. These were her tennis clothes that she always wore when she was going to practice.

"Just go play your tennis already."

She grinned and jumped off the tree as well. Before she ran into the direction of the courts of the academy, she waved, with the stupid smile on her face again, to the two who were left. When he looked down at her, and when she seemed so small suddenly, he couldn't help but to smile at the sunshine of his life.

"Natsume, you've been acting different lately." Koko said, after observing his companion.

"I hear that a lot lately," Natsume muttered.

Koko chuckled a bit and continued, with a smile: "Thanks to Sakura?"

"Thanks to Sakura."

"I wonder why everyone says you're a bad guy though. From what I've seen, you seem pretty normal."

Natsume raised his right eyebrow at first, but then realized it wasn't wrong what his new friend said. He chuckled a bit as well and joked: "I can be pretty scary in the morning though."

"Not at all!" Koko said, surprised, while shaking his hands, implying it wasn't true what he said. "Everyone says you always look like you're in a good mood in the morning!"

"Do I?" Natsume asked himself, thinking about it.

"Yes, you do."

They laughed together. That moment, Natsume's eye caught the tennis courts in the far distance. He could only see her vaguely, but from the looks of it, she was doing well. She ran around the court, often jumping out of happiness when the game was in her favour. Not much later, Koko turned around to look at Mikan's game as well. They watched it together; sometimes they would applaud for her when she got a point and sometimes giving out a disappointed 'aaah!' if she lost one.

Natsume couldn't help but to admit it was fun this way, even when Mochu joined them and shared the drinks he bought. Sitting together on a tree while watching the tennis game could actually be better than watching Wimbledon or Roland Garros from the tribunes. He knew how he was acting that moment was out of his character, but it was fine.

All was fine.

* * *

"Natsume!"

He turned around when he heard his name called in the corridors of the academy. He immediately recognized the blond hair out of the crowd and waited for his best friend to reach him, before walking further together.

"I heard you've become friends with Koko and Mochu?"

"Yeah," Natsume nodded. "Want some of this bread? I already have a sandwich."

Ruka looked at the bread his best friend held out to him. "Sweet bread?"

"Yeah. With fruits flavour. It's Mikan's favourite."

"I see," he smiled, aware of Natsume's distaste for sweet things. "I'll take it. Thanks."

They walked to the entrance of the main building, as they continued talking. Natsume glanced outside and saw the warm sun welcoming them brightly. A lot of people were outside, but he didn't mind it. He was starting to get used to the crowds, thanks to someone.

"I've been wondering what you've been up to, lately. You're always away or in a haste." Natsume mentioned, as he took a bite of his sandwich.

"Oh? You miss me?" His childhood friend said, jokingly.

Natsume glared at him.

"OK, sorry. That was a bad joke."

"So?"

"Hm, I got myself a girlfriend."

Natsume stopped walking and watched Ruka with a serious look in his eyes. "A girlfriend?"

"Yeah, a girlfriend. Imai Hotaru from my class. She's Mikan's best friend, you know." Ruka took a bit of his bread. Then he hastily added, with his mouth full: "Oh, let me correct that. 'She's Mikan's best _female_ friend.'"

"Sometimes you really piss me off," Natsume said, after they'd walked a bit longer and had been in silence for the whole time.

"Do I?"

"Yeah."

"Hehe, I was afraid so." Ruka ruffled the plastic package of the sweet bread and threw it in the closest trashcan to them. "I'm sorry for not telling you."

"It's fine, I guess." Natsume answered, with an uncomfortable feeling. "It's not like you have the obligation to tell me anyway. Sorry. I'm just being a baby."

Ruka laughed and patted his friend on his left shoulder. "I wonder how it is between you and Mikan though. Are you really just 'friends'?"

"Yeah. 'Friends'. That's it."

"Hmm…" His friend sounded. Natsume could tell that he was amused by his denial, probably thinking 'the first stage is always denial', but it was true. They were just friends and he liked it that way. "Shoot, the Ice Queen is waiting for me! I have to go, talk to you later!"

Natsume watched how Ruka ran in the direction of a girl with raven hair. He assumed she was the rumoured 'Ice Queen' Imai Hotaru and grinned at her, knowing they were both aware of each other's relationship with Mikan. As a reply to his grin, she nodded and then disappeared around the corner with Ruka. Natsume took the nod as a way of saying 'I'll leave her in your care' and walked further with a satisfied feeling, until he reached 'his' tree.

"Sakura Mikan, don't hide. I know you're there." He called, with his head raised. He could still see her brown, loose hair with his crimson-coloured orbs. "Don't hide, or I'll start throwing rocks at you."

"Fine!" She soon jumped off the tree and turned in his direction. "I feel like doing something different from the usual."

"Same."

"Let's skip class and go to Central town with Koko and Mochu." She suggested, as she neared him.

"Hn."

"I'll take that as a yes." She dashed off to the main building of the academy to search for Koko and Mochu. Natsume sighed a bit and then sat down under the tree, enjoying the benefits of the size of the tree. It gave him shadows sit in, so he could cool down from the warm weather while waiting for his friends to come.

* * *

"I really want to buy that pen. It looks really cute." She said, from the other side of the shop.

"Haha, too bad. It's fifty bunnies! No way you can afford it."

He looked at her, who was surrounded by two friends that she dragged along as well while she was looking for Koko and Mochu. He remembered that one of them was called Nonoko. He already knew the other girl that was laughing at Mikan for being so poor with bunnies. Shouda Sumire.

Koko, who was standing next to him and was supposed to be looking at a few books that he was interested in, suddenly whispered: "Natsume, are you sure you don't like Mikan?"

Natsume turned his head to him and whispered back: "Positive."

Koko frowned, but then he turned his glance back at the book he was holding. Natsume grinned and continued looking for a new pillow as well, when he heard Mochu grunt: "I think you're lying to yourself, Natsume-san."

"Perhaps."

When they were all standing at the counter, each one holding their own things they wanted to buy, Mikan suddenly noticed another fancy store at the other side of the street and dragged Nonoko and Mochu along. Natsume looked at how Mikan was squealing at the sight of fashionable bags and grinned, while he was waiting for Koko, who was standing in front of him in the row.

"Natsume," he heard from behind.

"Yeah, Shouda?"

When he turned around a bit, he saw from the corner of his eye that she smiled with a very peaceful look on her face. It was a rare sight for him to see her so calm with him nearby, so he took this opportunity to be nice to her for once.

"You've changed."

"Thanks, I guess." He replied. They were silent for a while. To break the calm atmosphere, he continued: "You know, Shouda?"

"Hm?"

"Thanks for a few years ago, when you tried to help me by trying to introduce me to your friends."

"Heh," she chuckled. "That's nothing."

"Still, thanks," he said, when he noticed Koko was probably listening as well.

"I wanted to say something as well," she murmured.

"Go ahead."

"I told myself I wouldn't forgive any girl that would try to get close to you." She said, with a resolute look in her eyes.

Everyone in the shop was silent for that bit moment. It could've been that it wasn't particularly quiet because Shouda said something surprising, because it felt like it so silent to Natsume that he couldn't even hear Mikan squealing anymore, while she definitely was. He looked at his right, where Koko had paid his money and looked very satisfied. Then, he grinned at his own blackout.

After that, Shouda softened up a bit and whispered: "But if it's Mikan, I'm fine with it."


	5. Temptations

**Illusions, dreams & happiness**

* * *

As the sun was burning in the sky, the birds and cicadas were chirping loudly and the crowds from all shouts were shouting, all he could hear was her panting. It was May, yet it was as if it was a hot summer day already. The sweat was starting to find its way down her cheekbone into her neck, while her eyes were still focused on the other side of the field, where her opponent had just hit a backhand to across the field. She was playing 'the' match. And while she was paying attention so much to the ball, he couldn't help but to look at her, instead of the ball, which he, as a supporter, should have been paying attention to instead.

It was the match she had been talking about so much recently, out of anxiety. She would talk about it on and on until she'd realize she was babbling and would look embarrassed. Of course, by then everyone in the tree would be laughing. Not laughing _at_ her, but _for_ her, so to show their encouragement and understanding of why she would be so nervous. Since after all, they were her friends.

He'd been wondering for a while what it was that had connected all of them. Why was it that the group in the cherry blossom tree could become a home for him and the others so quickly? Why was it exactly those people that he felt familiarity with?

Probably because they all saw her wings.

It was a topic they, a group of now ten friends totalling, nine without Mikan, would often be talking about while the main lead herself wasn't there. It started when Mochu first asked Natsume if he'd ever seen the pair of brilliant wings on her back. Of course he had seen them. He just never thought of bringing up something as ridiculous as seeing something a normal human being couldn't possibly possess. And naturally he wouldn't have said the truth if it didn't make him realize that he wasn't the only one seeing wings that protected her. And so, slowly, one by one, everyone surrendered to seeing wings. Ruka did, after Koko and Tobita Yuu had as well. Mikan's female friends, Nonoko, Anna, Sumire and even Hotaru did the same.

A beautiful big pair of white wings that only she had. They would only be seen whenever it was obvious she was happy or had something to be happy about. Hence they were called 'Wings of Happiness'. After all, Sakura Mikan also equalled happiness.

And now those wings were also shown, while she was playing her important match, the finals of the whole tennis tournament of the school. If she'd win, she'd be able to participate in the national tournament, which was her dream as a high school student. The white feathers were bright in the sunlight, although the wings were being taken back, now that their owner was still unsure, still hesitant about herself.

"Why is she holding back?" Koko asked from right to him, behind the fences.

"Don't know," Natsume responded, although he was vaguely aware the question wasn't pointed at him in particular.

She was winning. She only needed one more game — just one more. She was so close to the victory that any normal person would have thought they'd won already if they were in her place. She, however, was not normal. Natsume was aware how unsure she was about herself, just like the other eight were as well. Arrogance was not tolerated; the final destination was full concentration and an endless victory. They all knew the thought was in her mind so much she'd nearly forgotten to eat dinner because of training all the time. And now that the moment she was craving for had finally come, she definitely could not let the thought escape out of joy.

And now, one point only. She only needed one point so she could finally be freed from the tension and they would finally be able to walk around without having to worry about her being underfed. And it happened quickly. In just one eye blink, she dashed to the net and did a simple drop shot.

He grinned and opened the door in the fence as the crowd started yelling out of happiness. Yet oddly, the only sound he could hear was the sound of gravel under her and his shoes. From the corners of his eye he could've seen Nonoko and Anna pulling Hotaru into a hug as well, which would've been amusing if his focus wasn't fixated on today's winner.

She walked in his direction with a bright smile on her face before she took the towel from his hand and gulped down half the content of the bottle of water in her other hand.

"Congratulations, winner," he said, still with the grin planted on his face.

"Thanks," she said, as the corners of her mouth curved up and dimples appeared in her cheeks. Her eyes had started sparkling and seemed nearly as bright as the sunlight to him. "Ah, it feels as if someone lifted a hundred pounds off my shoulder."

"That's good," he said, even though his grin had faded away. It was frustrating how he wasn't able to help her lift off those pounds — how he couldn't help her with training, because he couldn't play tennis, even though he swore he could've learnt it easily. So, not wanting for her to notice his displeasure, he patted her over her head, making clear the one head difference in their heights.

Not soon after, she was lifted up high in the air. She stretched her two arms, as if she wanted to embrace the sky and the sun, while she laughed and yelled in happiness.

It was then when Natsume noticed Mochu still leaning against the fence, looking at the crowd with devoid eyes, showing how he was on his own mentally as well.

"Won't you join them?" Natsume asked, as he walked in his friend's direction.

"Too crowded. I'll congratulate her later on or something," Mochu grunted, trying to sound a bit nonchalant. "Moreover, Natsume-san, I'd like to talk to you about something," said he, with a displeased look shimmering in his eyes, as if the crowd right next of them was bothering him more than he'd said it did. "It's a private matter, actually."

Natsume raised his right eyebrow as he looked more at the annoyed face of the friend left to him, but didn't say anymore as he followed when Mochu told him to. Surely, Mochu was annoyed a lot of times – much more than was normal for a human, actually. Natsume didn't mind, since it was just an addition of different personalities and clichés in their clique, which meant variety, which would equal fun, or so the girls thought.

But the point was, never had Mochu really looked at him with this serious an expression.

"Right," Natsume responded, still with his right eyebrow arched, but following his friend, who brought him to the usual tree everyone loved. After a long, slightly awkward silence, Natsume attempted to break the ice by asking: "So, what's the thing you wanted to talk about?"

Mochu was gawking at him while leaning to the tree. His mouth would open, but then shut again, as if he wanted to say something, but changed his mind later on. His expression revealed how he felt uneasy and how he didn't know what to say, but eventually he pushed himself through it and whispered: "Mikan has a crush on someone, and that someone is not you."

"Eh, what?" Natsume asked, surprised by the sudden 'gossip' pushed over to him.

"I mean," Mochu was rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers, thinking about how he should explain this, or so it seemed. "I saw her a few das ago, talking to this person in our year and she was-" He looked around, looking for the last time if anyone was around and whispered even more softly than before: "She was _blushing_."

When another silence followed and Natsume assumed Mochu was done talking, the ruby-orbed boy sat down on the green grass and sighed a long, weary sigh, which was over-dramatized and not really normal for him to do, but this moment was an exception. "Mochu, why are you telling me this?"

"I don't know," he responded, with a slightly grim, but confused expression on his face. "I just thought you needed to know, since you didn't seem to be aware of it."

"Who Mikan likes is not really of my concern and I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate either you or me to be nosing around in her—" Natsume stopped and hesitated for a while. "Business. And if she'd wanted us to know, I'm sure she'd tell us on her own."

"You're going to lose her," Mochu muttered, as he sat down too and stared at the building behind his companion. "If you let this happen you really will regret it, I can tell."

Natsume threw his head back and asked himself how Mochu could possibly be so confident about himself that he was daring enough to _threaten_ him with his own future. Surely Mochu was a person who took pride in himself and Natsume knew that all too well, but generally, he had never really displayed this kind of behaviour before.

"I'm telling you just so you know," Mochu continued, when his friend didn't say anything anymore, "but what you're going to do with the information is entirely up to you."

* * *

He hadn't meant to. He really hadn't. He told himself that it was bad to be spying on his very best _female_ friend, and he knew it was true. He'd told Mochu that he didn't care at all. He thought it was betrayal of himself to actually be paying more attention to her after he was told about it. He thought it was more than just wrong to be following her around sometimes, while she thought he was just simply accompanying him. He thought he shouldn't have been watching out for upperclassmen that tried to get close to her.

But Natsume wasn't able to resist the temptation.

He desperately wanted to know it. Who was that guy? Did she seriously like him? Did they talk to each other often? What kind of expressions had she shown him already? What kind of relationship were they in? Were they already girlfriend and boyfriend? And why didn't she tell him if they really were?

And there he was, after having seen the truth with his own eyes, his heart beating in his chest. It felt as if he was panting like he'd just run a marathon. It made him think that the two people at the other side of the door could hear his heart and his breathing. That was how nervous and anxious he was.

"—I don't really think that matters, Tsubasa," she said, with a sweet voice Natsume had not heard her use before. "I still think you're doing a great job."

The upperclassman she was talking to laughed a bit nervously, as he looked at his own hands for a bit, and then smiled to her. "Thanks, although I'm still not sure. It's pressurizing to hear that from someone who just won a competition herself."

"You shouldn't be pressurized! I have faith in you, and a lot of other people do too! You and the rest of the team will win the finals, I can tell!"

He patted her over her head, which was probably his way of saying thanks.

Andou Tsubasa, a senior like Natsume and Mikan were. He was about to graduate from Alice Academy, but before that, he first had to win Japan's international basketball competition, as the captain of the Academy's basketball team.

_And he already had a girlfriend._

"Anyway, I'm meeting up with Misaki later and she'll bite my head off if I'm late… So, see you tomorrow or something?"

"Oh, yeah, sure." She said, smiling. "Bye."

"Bye!"

Natsume ran away from the door and hid himself in the toilet until he made sure both Tsubasa and Mikan were gone. The sounds of Mikan's heels and Tsubasa's whistling echoed softly through the corridors of the small side building, until everything went back to silent again.

He opened the dirty, blue door and stepped out on the dirty floor that had yet to be swept by the robot Takahashi. The sun was shining brightly through the small window left above of him, leaving his shadow to his right. The water was dripping from the water crane into the sink in a slow, constant rhythm.

He walked in the direction of the faucet with his head down. Slowly, he turned it left so the dripping would stop. Then a silence followed and his heart started to feel like it was sinking into a deep, empty hole. The moments of her smiling face and her 'Tsubasa' patting her over her head replayed themselves in his mind.

"Damn it!"

He kicked a blue door open, as it opened with a loud bang against the wall, revealed the dirty toilet and immediately slammed itself back again. He placed his hand on his forehead, the tips of fingers through his hair and the palm on his front.

_She was in love with him while she knew he had a girlfriend already._

Natsume closed his eyes, whispered a soft "Why…?" and waited for a response. As if. She was gone already, and no one was in this small, poor building but him. The only thing he could take as an answer was the echoing of his own voice.

He laughed, although he didn't know of anything that could actually be funny to him on that moment. The only thing he knew was that somehow, he felt hurt.

He didn't even know why.

Slowly, he started walking out of the toilet and left everything behind him.

* * *

"—tsume?"

He only saw black.

"Naaaaatsume?"

His eyes were closed and he felt tired. Who was bothering him while he was sleeping?

"Natsume? If you keep sleeping here you'll catch a cold."

Was it Mikan? If it really was her, he was better off sleeping anyway.

"Natsume, I know you're awake. Don't pretend you're sleeping."

"Fine."

He opened his eyes and looked directly into her brown, clear eyes. The background of purple colours told him that it was twilight and that he'd been sleeping for at least five hours. On the roof. The place where nobody ever came. Except for Sakura Mikan and Hyuuga Natsume.

The moment she backed away, he sat up and sighed. "I'm tired."

"Yeah, you like you are too," she muttered. "Sorry, it's the truth."

"Forgiven. Now, leave me alone."

He was about to lie down again, when she caught his arm and looked into his eyes, which he couldn't possibly have ignored.

"I need to tell you something."

He grunted, remembering the last time he'd heard the same words from Mochu, he hadn't heard a good message — and he didn't expect her to bring him good news either. Especially not after seeing Mikan's rendezvous with Andou Tsubasa a week ago.

"I've been having the feeling that you've been avoiding me lately," she said, not waiting for his response. She sat down on her knees and brushed her shoulder-length, brown hair back. "And I figured I still owe you an explanation about my mother, since you already told me the story about Aoi."

"What?"

"I mean, Mochu told me—" He grunted, which she ignored, "—that you probably wanted to know something from me, so when I thought about what it could be, the only answer was probably my own background story, which I do owe you, so I asked Mochu about it and he said that you're probably on the roof since he saw you coming up here and that you looked really pissed so I had to do something and—"

"Mikan, do me a favour." He was now the person to hold her by her arms. "Calm down."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. Sorry."

"Don't apologize. You didn't do anything wrong."

There was a silence between them. It was a familiar silence that was often there between their conversations in the tree – not awkward, but very comfortable. It was a kind of silence that wouldn't be there because neither of the two would know what to talk about, but because the quiet was needed for both. And so it was that moment too, until Mikan took a deep breath and started talking:

"'In your life, you'll walk a long path. When you come to a point where you have to choose which way to choose, you need to follow your instinct.'" She lied down after he lied down too, their heads joined together, while their pairs of legs each pointed into another direction. He folded his hands behind his head as he listened to her words and gazed up to the red-purple coloured sky. "'But no matter what decision you make, you need to know that, once you look back, everything may be gone.'

"That was what my mother always told me when she was trying to tuck me to sleep. It sounds a bit depressing, doesn't it? But I loved it when she'd tell me that, because it was meaningful and it made me feel like I was a grown-up adult like her too."

He tried to ignore how her voice was starting to become shaky and the fact that her eyes were now probably looking very glassy and wet. Since she wouldn't like it if he'd get interrupt her because she was about to cry.

"But the saying came true. The last part did, at least. Everything was indeed gone, when I found out my mum was gone."

He gulped when he heard the sound of her nails ticking against the hard stone of the roof.

"Could you have guessed? She left me when we were shopping in a store and she told me to try on some clothes. I was only eight that time. When I stepped out of the fitting room, my mother was not there anymore. I stayed in that store until it closed, while I cried and yelled and I made all the customers go away. The girl who worked there had been trying to find my mother for hours. The owner of the shop called the police. My mum was never found.

"I was sent to an orphanage, which was part of a church. The nun there was nice and always took care of me, even though I was a rather rebellious kid. You know, the type of little girl who wouldn't eat and drink until her mother would come and pick her up. I often screamed at the nun and yelled at her and called her penguin and other, not-so nice names out of frustration everyday because no one had come to pick me up. No one wanted me, or so I thought, after a year of waiting. So I grew to accept the nun and the other kids at the orphanage. I started helping out when a new orphan would arrive and I'd try to be friends with them.

"Slowly, I started forgetting how my mum smelled. Then I forgot with what kind of warmth she used to embrace me. After that, I forgot how her voice sounded and big she used to look like when I was walking next to her. On a certain moment, I probably forgot how she looked like too. All I knew was when I'd finally decided to think about her again in the orphanage, I'd forgotten everything about her, except for her name.

"When I was eleven, my grandfather came to pick me up. He said he was my mother's father and that he wanted to take care of me because mother was gone. Of course I didn't want to, since the orphanage was my home and all the kids over there were my friends." She got up and sat next to Natsume, as her hand reached for his and before he knew it, they were holding hands, her fingers through his. His hand was steady, while hers was shaking. He realized she was trying to do so as less as possible, but it didn't work. "The nun told me to go, that I had to take this opportunity, because a lot of orphans often wouldn't be picked up.

"So I went to my grandfather's home, who lives practically as a monk. You know, no meat, just vegetables. Thanks to him I'm vegetarian now too." She smiled a bit, although her eyes were still glittering in the dim light of the sun, showing how wet they were. "And I loved him. He was so nice and he took care of me, didn't promise me things he wouldn't be able to keep. He knew within a week what I liked and what I didn't like." Her voice was getting even shakier, making Natsume more anxious. He squeezed her hand, telling her it was okay. "But he died when I was thirteen, seven months after I entered Alice Academy."

The tears rolled down her cheeks and landed on their hands. The moment they dropped, they glittered in the light of the twilight, leaving behind a magical trace in his eyes. He looked into her eyes and saw how red they were. He gulped down a painful lump in his throat and squeezed her hand again, this time with no deeper meaning.

"'Once you look back, everything may be gone,'" she repeated, "I made that my life motto. Since when my mum was gone, I realized there were still plenty of things I'd wanted to do with her. I want to enjoy every moment of my life, do the right things and when I don't do that, I hope I'll be forgiven for doing the wrong thing.

"That's why, Natsume, I hope you'll forgive me too for not telling you this a long time ago, when I should have told you. I—"

He couldn't listen on anymore. He sat up quickly and shifted his right hand in the direction of her mouth. The second he touched her, he wet his hands with the tears that were still flowing from her eyes to her cheek and down. She closed her eyes and started wailing, first softly and then louder, as if she realized it would only make her feel better if she did so loudly. All the time, he didn't let go and had his other hand pat her head softly, the thought of Tsubasa doing the exact same thing a week ago aside.

The next thing he knew was that she'd fallen asleep by the time sun was already down and a field of uncountable stars was decorating the dark blue sky. The tears had not dried yet when he noticed her breathing had become slower and deeper. He wiped them away using the sleeve of his vest and patted her head for the last time. He let go of her hand and lifted her light body.

Slowly he walked down the staircase and left the main school building while carrying her. The campus was quiet and peaceful, no student or teacher was around. Some lights of the dorms were turned on, other windows revealed nothing but a dark curtain covering it. He walked into the direction of the big girls' dormitory. In the light of a street-lamp, he could still see traces of the tears, as she sighed.

Slowly, he carried her into the building, where he found Imai Hotaru already waiting for them. She nodded a bit, just like she often did to him. He followed her into what seemed like Mikan's room and placed her on the bed with orange covers. Before he left the room, he took a last glance at the girl he loved. Then, he left the dormitory and took a big step into the darkness of the night.

After that night, he hadn't talked to her for four days.


	6. Crescendo

**Illusions, Dreams & Happiness**

**

* * *

**

"Please go out with me!"

The girl bent in a full 90 degrees position. Her long, silky blond hair was swept down, the curls in it being splendid. No split ends could've ever been found in her hair. The glossy colour of it was shining in the bright light of the sun. It reminded him of why Koko had looked back several times whenever this girl passed them by in the corridors. And he was willing to bet that Koko would've cursed if he'd realized who Natsume's secret admirer had been.

She'd been bending that way for some time when he broke the silence with a sad "Sorry, I can't date you."

"I see…" She stood up straight, as she bit her under lip. Her cheeks were bright red and her dark eyes wouldn't look in his direction. "I was having that feeling already. My friends warned me and they told me that you…" She didn't finish her sentence when she noticed her voice was about to break.

He noticed it too.

"I'm sorry."

She bowed one last time, turned around and ran away, without saying a word, out of fear that she would cry out if she would. He watched her black hair swing up and down until she disappeared around the corner of the back of the school building, and then started rubbing his right temple.

It had been like this for some while. He would go to school, find yet another letter in his locker and open it. Then Koko would chuckle, as if he was watching the best sitcom ever and pat him when he'd finish reading it from over Natsume's shoulder. '_Good luck_'? With what? Turning others down?

"I'd rather not have to turn anyone down to begin with," he muttered, softly to make sure other people wouldn't hear. Which reminded him… "Spying on others is rude."

He looked in the direction of the forest, which was located west of him, where a few green bushes had started rustling. Two girls jumped up from them and shook the leaves off their clothes and hair, while their expressions revealed how they felt like little children being caught trying to steal cookies from the cookie jar just before dinner.

He watched them run away until the noise of the campus overtook everything else. Students were outside eating their lunch and talking with each other, yet there he was, standing behind the main school building, thinking about the reason why he was suddenly confessed to more and more.

His legs failed on him and he sat down before he'd actually fall, with his back leaning on the cold wall. He looked into the bushes again. He knew she was there. He knew she was somewhere there, hiding behind the green leaves, trying hard not to make any noise – something he knew she was bad at.

For an instant Natsume hesitated if he should've told her that he knew she was there after sneaking up on her. But then again, he'd managed to somehow avoid her for the past four days, while he thought it was an impossible task. He did it purely for her to recover after telling him a story she hadn't told anyone before yet, he told himself. Yet, secretly, he also knew he was actually avoiding out of fear to become too fond of her even after knowing that his situation was hopeless.

Since, after all, she was in love with Andou Tsubasa.

He muttered words that consisted of a few colourful words under his breath, inaudible for anyone. Then, he continued walking and turned around the corner of the big building, wearing a poker face, pretending like nothing had happened.

The past days had gone by very, very slowly. So slowly that he'd begun to get annoyed at every single time anyone repeated something, like telling a story of what he did in his weekend, or the teacher repeating annoying maths formulas over and over and over. And perhaps they didn't even repeat it that many times in reality, but in his mind, it was as if someone had been whispering the same words into his ear from the moments he woke up until the moments he fell asleep:

"_You are in love with her_."

It was just that whenever he was captivated by those doomed six words that made one hell of a line, he felt annoyed and tried to recall how irritated he had been when his Maths teacher had lectured the same formula the whole time over and over again in order to distract himself. Ruka and Koko had remarked how Natsume was acting strange and that he shouldn't be avoiding Mikan. Surely he'd been reluctant to tell them and Natsume also ended up thinking it'd be better to not tell. The two of them were sadly enough still aware of it.

"So," Natsume nearly jumped up from surprise when he heard Mochu's voice near his right ear, "what the heck is happening between you and Sakura?"

Natsume stopped walking and managed to stifle away an eye roll at his companion, who seemed to be very amused with the current situation. A sudden urge to continue walking and ignore him suddenly came up in his mind and he was about to do so when Mochu grabbed him by his arm.

"Just kidding. I know you don't want to talk about her."

"I fail to see the humour," Natsume muttered, ready to depart once again.

"Naru needs to speak to you."

"What?" Natsume turned around, surprised by the sudden mention of Narumi, his homeroom teacher, who hadn't once said anything about Natsume's attitude, or the fact that Natsume skipped too many classes for his own good. And he never wanted 'to speak' to him either. "Naru?"

"Yeah. He said it's urgent. He looked like it was serious business too." Mochu said. "Real serious business."

Natsume sighed and thanked Mochu with a soft mutter. Then he continued walking and entered the big, grey building. It looked even more enormous than usually, although nothing had really changed it except for his own imagination. He cursed his own mood and the illusions going on in his mind when he knocked on the door of the teacher's room.

"Come in," Jinno's voice sounded at the other side of the door.

He opened and entered the room like his Maths teacher had told him to do. What he saw in the chaotic teacher room was just Jinno and Narumi sitting each behind their own desks. Narumi immediately looked up from his pile of work and greeted Natsume with a smile like he always did during the classes Natsume rarely attended or when they met in the corridors – which Natsume usually just ignored. "Hyuuga-kun."

"Right," Natsume muttered, "what was it you needed to talk to me about?"

Narumi nodded and signalled for Natsume to sit down on the chair next to him. He dropped his pen on his desk and turned to his pupil and started: "The High School Principal thinks you've missed too many classes. You need to make up for the time lost, especially now that you're graduating soon."

"What?"

"I expect you to finish this essay by next week," Naru held out a paper. "You will have to study the text on pages 102 to 146 in your textbook and use the mentioned theory in your essay."

Natsume took it and, with great disgust, he read the words: '_What happiness is to me._' He looked at his teacher, questioning this ridiculous subject along with the fact if this was a joke or not. The respond from his homeroom teacher was valid: He immediately turned around and recommenced with his work, making clear to Natsume that he was dismissed.

Natsume grunted and cursed again in his mind, losing count how many foul words he'd already thrown around that day. The paper in his hand felt like any paper, but way heavier, as if it was a schoolbag filled with a lot of books.

And so the paper had felt for him for the rest of the day. He'd stared at the empty paper for about half an hour while it was lying still on his desk. He should've expected this – the fact that he'd eventually have to pay up for all the classes he skipped. Still, he did not expect it was a cheesy and horribly _easy_ assignment. In fact, he'd wondered in the half hour that he'd been staring down at the blank paper from different perspectives if this assignment was not just a catch.

After all, it did sound like Narumi to give Natsume an assignment for him to make and to just read and laugh at it afterwards.

He sighed.

But then again, Narumi looked somewhat serious.

Natsume sat down on the comfortable chair behind the desk, both two pieces of high quality furniture he was allowed to make profit of as a special star. Still, he disliked his room very much. It was big – too big. Too empty, the only things in his room being a bed, a chair, a desk, a closet and a carpet. And a bathroom attached to it. He knew he was allowed to buy more in Central Town so he could fill up his room more, but he wouldn't quite know what he would find useful.

And now he thought about it, he'd gotten to like Mikan's tiny, but cosy room more than his own.

"'_What happiness is to me_,'" he muttered. "Talking about ridiculous subjects."

He looked out of one of the two windows at his right and saw the bright shining sun covering most of the school campus. The moment he did so, he felt as if his eyes were burning and quickly averted his gaze. Natsume should've realized that his eyes were more used to darkness than to light. After all, that was how he'd always thought. Until hardly three months ago.

He grinned and started writing. Afterwards, he didn't even reread the pages he should have read. He couldn't even recall what he'd written down anymore. He'd just wanted to get rid of it as soon as he could.

* * *

"Mikan."

"Hm?"

"What's that?"

"Hm… An old portable CD-player I bought in Central Town."

He frowned. "CD-player?"

"Yeah."

That was basically how they'd started their very first conversation in four – no, five days. CD-players. Sophisticated, retro, nearly died out CD-players. Natsume could punch himself when he remembered the moment he couldn't think up any other good topic to talk about.

"Want to listen too?" She asked, holding out her right earphone for him.

He shrugged and took it. What he heard was, to his surprise, very calm and soothing music. The vocals were covered by a woman of around the age of 20, he guessed, and the background music consisted purely of piano, drums and bass. The beat was rather slow compared to that of a lot of songs Sumire tended to listen to ('They're all at the top of the Oricon charts at the moment!'). He hadn't thought a cheerful and sometimes somewhat hyper girl like Sakura Mikan would listen to calm, composed music like the song he was listening to at that moment.

"What do you think?" She asked.

"It's nice," he answered truthfully. "I didn't know you liked music like this."

"Now you know I do. It's soothing and relaxing. What did you expect then?"

"Pop? With all the dancing stuff. Boy bands?"

She laughed. She didn't really laugh hard like when she watched comedy shows on Thursday evenings, nor did she laugh bitterly like she'd just heard a bad joke from Mochu. It was a bit like her voice was singing when she laughed, and he couldn't help but to wonder why it was he'd never noticed it so much until now.

"Mikan, I need to talk to you."

She immediately stopped laughing and she looked surprised at him. "Oh, I see. What is it?"

He looked around the area they were. They were the only ones sitting in the tree (and he did not appreciate the 'He and she are sitting in a tree, kissing'-song just that moment), the only ones sitting near the river were either far away from them or had earplugs in their ears. He noted it was safe to talk about private topics.

"I know you like Andou."

"Hm," she hummed and took the earplug away from him, turned off her CD-player and put it in her bag. "I see."

"I didn't mean to stalk you or anything."

"You only make yourself more suspicious by saying that," she said, jokingly.

"What are you going to do about it?" He asked, ignoring her acted nonchalance. "Confess?"

The smile on her face disappeared almost instantly and she averted her eyes. With a soft voice she said: "I'll just wait. There's no way I can just confess while he already has someone else he loves."

"Not even courageous enough for that?"

She looked at him with big, surprised eyes again when he jumped off the tree. He wouldn't bother looking back if she was taking any notice of him at all, because he could sense the curious eyes pointed at his back. "I dare you to confess, Sakura Mikan." And then, he walked away.

That was how Hyuuga Natsume, for the very first time, was the one to ruin a conversation between him and Sakura Mikan.

* * *

"Charming. Very charming, Mochiage. Now do me a favour and get dressed." Sumire muttered as she covered her eyes with her own hands.

There were a few sarcastic grunts to be heard in the canteen, although the general awkward silence was still there. After all, Mochu was there standing in pink shorts and nothing else.

"What?" The guy asked. "Seriously, I swear this is all his fault!" He pointed accusingly at Koko, who was drinking milk with an innocent expression, like a toddler at day care. "He started the bet!"

"What kind of bet this time?" Natsume heard Nonoko ask with a disgusted tone.

"Eh." Mochu hesitated for a while, and then continued: "A bet between Koko and I on… How long it would take for Mikan and Natsume to talk together again?"

"He said it'd be five days. I thought it'd be eight days at the very least."

"Seriously? Eight days?" Nonoko asked again, this time turned with her head to the right, her elbows leaning on the table surface, facing Natsume with a questioning look. "You haven't talked _for eight days_?"

Well, Natsume thought it wasn't necessary to mention their private conversation in the tree that day, so he kept quiet.

"Until today. During Maths. Just before lunch," Koko mused out loud. "She asked him if she could borrow his-"

Koko had never really been able to finish his sentence. Not that it was necessary for everyone to know what object had caused for Mochiage to be standing there in pink shorts. Natsume knew the answer anyway. She'd asked for his eraser, which she returned after merely three seconds. The point was, Koko never managed to finish his sentence because he was interrupted by the tiny freshman with blonde hair that always bumped into Natsume in the corridors and who was now shouting something unbelievable:

"Sakura Mikan just confessed to Andou Tsubasa!"

* * *

_I apologize for the tardiness. If I say that exams do kill, will I be forgiven?  
_-WR


End file.
